One potent offshoot of the exponentially swelling internet is choice. Choice in hotels, choice in dining, choice in meeting venues. In this buyers’ market, customers demand nothing but the best in everything they purchase. Hotels are no longer the only entrants in the octagon for conference revenues, but the cage has been opened to restaurants, universities, museums, churches and unused office space.

What’s more, the very essence of business meetings and conferences is itself in a volatile state. Laptops, video chats, webinars, smartphones – people can work from everywhere nowadays, and they are. Many don’t even have an office away from home to call their own.

This is nothing new and reassuringly, at least in the near foreseeable future, nothing will replace quality face-to-face time. It’s still the best means for effective teamwork. However, the combination of technological requirements and increasing choice has changed consumer expectations, particularly when discussing the physical attributes of the meeting space.

Noble’s private-equity funds have invested more than $2 billion in hotels that include Hyatt, Hilton, Starwood and Marriott.(Save the date: RealShare L.A.comes to the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza in Los Angeles, CA on March 27, 2013)

LOS ANGELES-Hotel owners and operators are lagging when it comes to making their services more “computer-friendly,” experts at the annual Americas Lodging Investment Summit say, and those who fail to bring their systems up-to-date will rapidly lose business as travelers increasingly use their cell phones and other hand-held devices to make reservations or even order a meal delivered to their room.

“Our property-management systems, as an industry, are very archaic,” says Mit Shah, CEO of Atlanta-based Noble Investment Group. Noble’s private-equity funds have invested more than $2 billion in hotels that include Hyatt, Hilton, Starwood and Marriott.

It was a greater feat than any 30-second spot has ever achieved: skydiver Felix Baumgartner dropped from near-space (23 miles high) back to the Earth’s surface.

It was an astonishing display of the value of human endurance, of adventure, investment and commitment. The fact that this mission to the edge of space was, in fact, funded and created by a brand is, quite simply, remarkable.

Having achieved 8m concurrent views of the spectacle on YouTube, there is no arguing that Red Bull’s Stratos project was an astonishing leap forward in marketing, but it also delivered something far bigger than eyeballs.

The fact is, a brand both created and funded a mission to the edge of space that will create data and insight that could benefit NASA. As one viewer tweeted: ‘That awkward moment when you realise an energy drink has a better space programme than your nation.’

Hotel and hospitality companies are taking advantage of Apple's new Passbook app, which stores a user's membership cards, tickets coupons and reservations on iPhones and iPod Touch devices.

ZDirect, for one, is developing new integration that links directly from a hotel's property-management system to the Apple iOS 6 Passbook digital wallet. Using the ZMail electronic communication platform, a guest's hotel confirmation becomes a mobile "pass" that is sent to an iPhone or iPod Touch and added to the mobile Passbook file. Since Passbook is time and location based, hotel confirmations automatically appear on the lock screen when and where the information is needed. As travelers get close to the hotel, their confirmations pop up for easy viewing.

Consultants Baum+Whiteman say that a flavor a day keeps recession at bay. Restaurant chains, hotels and smart independents are ramping up their flavor profiles… chucking artificial stuff, exploring whole new worlds of real ingredients… especially at bars. Big snackification of America in hotel lobbies and fast feeders. Old fogey chains doing fast-casual disco dancing. Dumbelling at fast feeders. Plus: A big bunch of buzzwords for the year ahead.

Baum+Whiteman International Food+ Restaurant Consultants creates high-profile restaurants around the world for hotels, restaurant companies, museums and other consumer destinations. Based in New York, their projects include the late Windows on the World and the magical Rainbow Room, Equinox in Singapore, and the world’s first food court. Their annual hospitality predictions follow …

Social media has been touted as having an increasingly important role in many aspects of the hospitality industry, including guest satisfaction and process improvement.

However, one of the more intriguing aspects of social media is their potential to move markets by driving consumers’ purchasing patterns and influencing lodging performance.

In the absence of a comprehensive attempt to quantify the impact of social media upon lodging performance as measured by bookings, occupancy, and revenue, this report uses the unique position of Cornell’s Center for Hospitality Research to combine data from three CHR research partners (ReviewPro, STR, and Travelocity), and two other data providers (comScore and TripAdvisor) in a first attempt at determining ROI for social-media efforts.

The analysis finds the following. First, the percentage of consumers consulting reviews at TripAdvisor prior to booking a hotel room has steadily increased over time, as has the number of reviews they are reading prior to making their hotel choice.

Hotels Gird Against Flu PandemicThis year’s flu is taking down a lot of people and causing panic in some areas. Here’s how to battle the bug at your hotel.Tuesday, January 22, 2013Caryn Eve Murraybookmark this

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For Ken Cusson, the best safeguard this season against influenza’s potentially devastating effect on his staff at the Newport Harbor Group has been an inoculation called preparedness.

With 15 restaurant properties in Rhode Island and Massachusetts – one of them hotel-based - flu season has alchemized the company’s daily operational practices into the kind of strong medicine that Cusson hopes will be a preventive dose more than anything else.

As 2012 came to end and “Best of” lists saturated the media, there were only a few scattered announcements made about leading companies in green and sustainability rankings. I did a little of my own research to try to determine which hotel company was the greenest or top performer of 2012. And the winner is … the safe answer, of course: It depends. This article explores why.

Before trying to determine the greenest hotel company, it is important to step back and ask a broader question: Which is the best hotel company overall? This will vary inevitably depending on the criteria and the viewpoint of the person judging. Even the question, “Which is the world’s largest hotel company?” varies.